Watch: Emperor Penguins In Antarctica Find Camera On Ice, Take Selfie Video

“But let me first take a selfie.” Two curious emperor penguins in Antarctica got the hang of this phrase completely when they captured a short selfie video of themselves after coming across an expeditioner’s camera left on the ice.

The Australian Antarctic Division posted the 38-second clip to its social media channels on Thursday. The division said one of the group's expeditioners, Eddie Gault, placed the camera on the ground near the Auster Rookery — home to a large emperor penguin colony — while visiting the nearby Mawson research station, about 5,475 kilometers from Hobart in Antarctica.

"It didn't take long for the naturally curious birds to seize the opportunity for a selfie," the group said.

While the video at first showed a handful of penguins from a low vantage point, one of the birds soon waddles over to the camera and knocks it over and then angles the screen to focus only on its face.

Moments following this, another penguin soon also makes its way into the frame. For about half a minute, the two birds chirp and cock their heads inquisitively at the screen, before perking up and shaking their heads repeatedly, as captured in the video.

The penguins’ selfie has been viewed more than 60,000 times on the Australian Antarctic Division Facebook page at the time of publishing this story.

Emperor penguins are said to be native to Antarctica and are also the largest of the species. They are the only creatures there to breed during the harsh Antarctic winter, where the temperature is sometimes likely to drop as low as 50 degrees Celsius below zero.

This is not the first time that an animal selfie has made the headlines or even the first time a penguin in Antarctica has captured itself on camera.

In 2013, a Gentoo penguin in Antarctica was said to have captured an open-beaked photo of itself using a GoPro camera from a Canadian cruise company.

This incident and the images of the penguins are also reminiscent of the infamous “monkey selfie” that was taken in 2011 by Naruto, a male crested black macaque, using a camera which belonged to wildlife photographer David J. Slater.

At the time, the photographer was visiting the Tangkoko-Batuangus Nature Reserve on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi in order to shadow a troupe of macaques. On the second day of his visit, a group of monkeys reportedly began playing with his camera, so Slater mounted it on a tripod and adjusted the settings in a way so that if the animals hit the trigger by chance it would capture a close-up. And Naruto did, prompting Slater to write:

"I duly moved away and bingo, they moved in, fingering the toy, pressing the buttons and fingering the lens. I was then to witness one of the funniest things ever as they grinned, grimaced and bared teeth at themselves in the reflection of the large glassy lens. . . . They played with the camera until, of course, some images were inevitably taken! . . . It was like the joy of seeing your new baby learn about something new and becoming enlightened with a new toy. They loved the shutter noise, but most of all they loved their own faces, 'chimping' away in what seemed to me to be total fun for them."